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In contrast with the others, these men were laughing. Albion was "consid'able of a joker," Mr. Peaslee reflected gloomily. Then old Abijah Keith stormed in, and in his high, shrill voice began immediately to utter his unfavorable opinion of everything and everybody. "Well, if he ain't here again!" exclaimed, in disgust, Hiram Hopkins, one of the men in front of Solomon.
The occasion was solemn even to the older eyes of Mr. Peaslee. "S'posin' it was me," he said to himself. Presently Mr. Edwards, Jim, and the constable emerged from the house. Jim looked white and frightened, but was bravely trying to bear himself like a man. Mr. Edwards, his long, shaven upper lip stiff as a board, looked stern and uncompromising. Barton was as big and good-humored as ever.
Jim was in the loft of the barn, where he was carefully examining a barrel of early apples with a view to filling his pockets with the best; the housekeeper had merely stepped across the street to borrow some yeast, and Mr. Edwards, who had a headache, was lying down in the chamber immediately above Jim's den. Mr. Peaslee stood and gazed.
"'T aint likely they'll do much to a leetle feller like that, I guess," he said, searching the constable's face. "Dunno," said Barton, passing on. Solomon, much concerned, leaned on his rake and watched him enter the Edwards house. Jim had disappeared; there was some delay. Mrs. Peaslee came to the door. "Arrestin' that Ed'ards boy, be they, Solomon?" she said.
Peaslee," asked Sampson, so unexpectedly that Solomon jumped, "didn't you say something about a marble?" "Yes," said Mr. Peaslee, gloomily. "Fit the bore, did it?" continued the foreman. "Slick," answered Mr. Peaslee, with the brevity of despair. "If that marble fitted the bore," said Albion Small, while Sampson nodded assent, "it's my opinion it might do considerable damage."
After his first laughter, his thoughts had dwelt upon the trouble that Solomon had brought upon the innocent Jim, "just to save his own hide, the old skee-zicks!" he exclaimed to himself. After all, what did he know about Peaslee? If the man had merely shot at a cat, why under the sun should he not have said so at once, and saved all this bother?
"Well, now, well, now," said Solomon, taking the knife in his hand and pretending to examine it closely. "That's a pretty knife, to be sure, to be sure. Real showy, ain't it? Looks as if 't was made to sell all outside and no money in the bank, like some young fellers ye see." Dannie Snow giggling outright, Mr. Peaslee turned and gazed at him in mild inquiry. Young Potter turned a dull red.
Peaslee, so indignantly that he stopped eating for a moment, knife and fork upright in his rigid, scandalized hands, while he gazed at his thin, energetic, shrewish little wife. "'Settin' round and talkin'! It's mighty important work, now I tell ye. I guess there wouldn't be much law and order if it wa'n't for the grand jury. They don't take none but men o' jedgment. Takes gumption, I tell ye.
John B. Peaslee, LL.D., in an address on moral and literary training in school, urges that the custom, so successfully begun, shall be kept up, and that children in all grades of schools shall be required to learn every week a few lines of good poetry, instead of choosing for themselves either verse or prose for declamation. Mr.
"I suppose," he said, with evident reluctance, "I shall have to hold him for the grand jury. But I guess the safety of the community won't be greatly threatened if I let him out on bail. I should think a couple of hundred would do. I suppose there'll be no difficulty about the bond?" The tone of the proceedings suited Mr. Peaslee well.
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